Yard MD: Create your own butterfly oasis with these plants and more

Jul. 3, 2013

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Post-Crescent Media

A Viceroy, a look-alike Monarch mimic, perches on purple coneflower, one of the best plants to include in your butterfly garden. / Rob Zimmer/Post-Crescent Media

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During the summer of 1960, Jack Voight collected butterflies as a young boy, mounting them, as many boys did back then, to make a framed collection of the colorful flying insects found in the fields and meadows he explored.

“We were so poor back then that I couldn’t afford one of those butterfly nets, so I used a branch to capture and stun the butterflies,” Voight explained.

This summer, Voight and his wife, Marty, continue this lifelong obsession with butterflies by opening a wondrous destination in northeast Wisconsin, the only facility of its kind in our area, Butterfly Gardens of Wisconsin.

Already gaining international attention, the Butterfly Gardens of Wisconsin, located two miles north of Appleton on State 47, opens July 13 with a two-day grand opening that will feature tours of the gardens, a photo gallery of butterflies, as well as guest speakers who will present butterfly-themed topics over the weekend.

Visitors to the gardens from across the state will be treated to a number of special attractions, including a two-acre monarch butterfly maze cut into a large wildflower meadow, a free-flying butterfly house where visitors will walk among native host and nectar plants and be surrounded by fluttering butterflies of many types, as well as a butterfly lab, photo gallery and gift shop.

Backyard butterflies

The mission of the Butterfly Gardens of Wisconsin is to encourage all property owners to create a backyard butterfly garden of their own. To do this, nectar and host plants used in the gardens will be offered for sale in the gift shop.

Creating a butterfly garden at home is quite simple, providing you are able to provide the things butterflies need most — host plants, nectar plants and a water source.

While the list of butterfly host plants and nectar plants is long, you can pick and choose as many as you would like to attract specific butterflies, or simply create a smorgasbord for the winged insects.

Most butterfly host and nectar plants should be planted in full sun, so choose a location on your property that receives as least a good six hours of sunlight each day in spring and summer.

A host of ideas

Looking for some ideas to attract butterflies to your garden? Here are some of the best host plants for butterflies in our area, as well as the specific butterflies that they attract.

• Black swallowtails are attracted to members of the carrot family. This includes parsley, dill, celery, carrots, as well as Queen Anne’s Lace, a wildflower that many deem a weed. Planting these in your butterfly garden is sure to attract this beautiful butterfly.

The caterpillars of the black swallowtail are unmistakable. Large and black with many vertical stripes in lime green with rows of bright orange dots, this caterpillar is not a garden pest and will eat only enough of these greens to help it mature into a spectacular adult.

• Milkweeds, including common milkweed, orange milkweed, swamp milkweed and red, or tropical, milkweed, are all excellent choices as they are host plants for the most beloved butterfly of them all, the monarch. The sweet nectar milkweeds produce also attracts many other species to your garden.

• Planting cabbage in your garden is a great way to attract common cabbage white butterflies to your garden and to enjoy watching the green caterpillars feed and transform into winged adults. Remember, you are planting this for the butterflies, so don’t be upset if they begin to eat the leaves. That’s the whole point.

• Colorful sulphur butterflies in yellow, orange, black and white, can be attracted by planting members of the alfalfa or legume family in your garden. Great choices include wild indigo (baptisia), wild senna, or popcorn plant and wild lupine.

• All of these same members of the legume family will also attract tiny Eastern Tailed Blue butterflies. These butterflies, colored bright blue and not more than an inch across, are joyful additions to the spring and summer garden.

• Asters and black-eyed susans are host plants for many of the beautiful checkerspot and crescent butterflies, so be sure to include these. Both plants are among the best nectar plants for butterflies as well.

• Asters and joe-pye weed, among many others in the sunflower family, are host plants for painted lady butterflies.

Consider the trees

Something many people are not aware of is that trees are also an important part of your butterfly garden, as many of our largest butterflies use trees as host plants for their caterpillars.

Eastern tiger swallowtails use wild cherry, magnolia, birches, ash, mountain ash and cottonwood as host plants. Giant swallowtails can be attracted with hoptree and prickly ash shrub. The beautiful red-spotted purple also uses wild cherry, as well as oaks, birch, willows and serviceberry.

Food for flight

Nectar plants are also a necessity in the garden, particularly late in the season when blooming wildflowers are scarce and monarch migration is at its peak.

Previously mentioned plants such as asters and milkweed are especially effective as nectar plants, as well as adding beauty to the garden.

The best butterfly nectar plant, in my opinion, is blazing star or liatris. Many readers share this opinion based on emails and posts I have received. With its tall, bottle-brush like flowers in purple (also available in white), these striking wildflowers attract large numbers of butterflies to their precious nectar. I have observed a monarch, tiger swallowtail, skipper and sulphur on one liatris stalk, all at the same time.

Native purple coneflower is one of the best nectar plants you can provide to butterflies and dozens of species will feed upon its sweet, sugary nectar.

Another great choice is joe-pye weed, along with its relative, the strongly colored ironweed. Both plants bloom in mid-to-late summer and feature towering stalks of fluffy pink and purple flowers that attract loads of butterflies.

Goldenrods are a great choice for late season nectar plants, providing bountiful food in late August into September for migrating monarchs.

In addition to native wildflowers, be sure to add groups of late-flowering annuals such as zinnias, cosmos and heliotrope to your beds as these will last right up until first frost.